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A New Earth, An Old Deception: Awakening to the Dangers of Eckhart Tolle?s #1 Bestseller

Author:	Richard Abanes
Published By:	Bethany House (Bloomingtoon, Minnesota)
Pages:	190
Price:	£7.99
ISBN:	978 0 7642 0664 1

Reviewed by Alun Brookfield.

Not all readers of Ministry Today will be aware of the events of March-April 2008, when Oprah Winfrey started an online seminar featuring spiritual teacher, Eckhart Tolle and his bestseller, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose. Over one million people worldwide joined the online seminar. Richard Abanes, an “award-winning journalist” and author of twenty books, mostly in the areas of cults, the occult, world religions and pop culture, was clearly disturbed by this phenomenon and has written this book to combat Tolle’s ideas.

His basic thesis (although this is a populist book, rather than a scholarly one) is that there is nothing new in Tolle’s teachings except the packaging. He argues that Tolle is merely presenting us with a mish-mash (my rather unscholarly word, not his) of what have become known as New Age philosophies, which is merely a convenient way of describing a vast array of rather woolly pseudo-religious and psycho-religious teachings gleaned from a multitude of non-mainline religions.

The difference is the way in which Tolle presents them, packaged in “evocative language and colourful imagery” (p.17). To this reviewer it seems obvious that anyone coming to Tolle’s ideas with their brains engaged will find themselves stopping every few lines to ask, “What on earth does that mean?” and coming to the conclusion that, the higher your IQ, the less likely you are to take him seriously. Certainly that’s my conclusion, having read the quotes from Tolle contained in this book.

All flippancy aside, however, it is equally obvious that Tolle has been embraced by some notably intelligent people, not least of whom is Oprah Winfrey herself. So is this an issue we are likely to encounter in parish/local ministry?

The truth is that I’m not sure, and therefore I’m not sure whether I will ever make use of Abanes’ refutation of Tolle’s ideas. Abanes asserts that the issue is ‘truth’, but I find myself asking, with Pontius Pilate, “What is truth?”. That’s not to say that there is no truth, but I’m not convinced that Abanes’ approach (peppered throughout with Bible verses and assertions) is “THE truth” any more than Tolle’s. I’m not sure that most people living in my parish, even if they ever heard of Eckhart Tolle, would come and talk to their Vicar about it. They would assume I would disagree (and they might be right, but not necessarily!).

As I read this book, I became increasingly irritated by Abanes’ attitude that he is right and Tolle is wrong, the very attitude for which he criticizes Tolle. Nevertheless, if you feel threatened by Tolle’s sales figures, you may well find this book comforting. Personally, I think I’ll buy Tolle’s book (improving his sales figures!), read it for myself and work out how to refute them (if indeed they all need refuting - even the most wayward of teachers usually have some of the truth, which is why they can be so dangerous).